Poem of an Insomniac

On 15th of every month,
hot coffees shared at 12 in the midnight with peaceful silences made more sense than the hustle caused by the 1st of every month.
So on every 15th of every month, I loved you a little more,
hoping for another coffee,
the next one in the balcony instead of the kitchen counter.

You know,
your sneaking into the house instead of using the front door,
would often scare me,
because I knew,
one day,
you will sneak out.
Just like that.
Out of my life.
And you would never understand that,
because you would never know,
that you were going to leave.

So the idea of you leaving would unsettle me for days to come,
and from each 16th till the next 15th,
I would build walls of coffee beans
and tissue paper poetry,
so that the next time you come from the front door,
you would know that I was waiting for you.
That I would always wait for you.
With two empty mugs,
and one coffee kettle resting in between them.

And now when you are gone,
I am building those walls again,
letting them grow higher with each passing day
because I know, you can never be gone forever.
It is difficult for me to accept that people leave,
so I push my ego into denial.
‘Nothing can make them stay;
nothing.
Not even the moments spent together.
Do you see,
how all the things that should matter to us,
matter so little when someone is leaving?
It is okay, life does not stop.’
I would convince myself.
‘Matter so little to them, that they go,
kicking off each single unit of Bergson’s time,
burning it,
as the flames drop like water droplets
creating a fire of emptiness.’

They say that there are 3000 realms through which you can feel a particular moment,
but we look at it through just one single realm.
Maybe love wasn’t the zone we delved into,
because you see,
during all the 35 moments you spent with me,
with 20 marked as midnight coffee meetings,
and 4 lying under the guise of
stolen kisses,
shared sunsets,
unread letters,
book reading sessions when you would eventually fall asleep.
And the other 11 as memories without names,
none of us would look at them like fire burning cigarettes,
like snowflakes becoming morning dew,
like sun telling the moon, ‘here is some light. And here a little love.’
Maybe we ourselves were just two moments
waiting to be seen by each other.
But left unseen.

But don’t worry.
I am building that wall,
with coffee beans and tissue paper poetry.
A kettle, like a cauldron of our separation,
still rests between our coffee mugs.
And after watching it all,
I know, that with all the coffees I drank with you,
you left me an insomniac,
who can build only walls
of separation,
which only you can break,
because only you know the other way.
Of sneaking in from the window.